If Suzy Welch Was Your Mother, Would You Just Automatically Become You? Let’s Find Out, Shall We

Foreign.

Hi, everybody.

It's Susie Welch. Okay. And this is becoming you. This is the podcast where I recklessly, but also very lovingly try to help my listeners figure out the answer to the question, what should I do with my life? To help them understand who they are standing still so they can figure out which direction and how fast to start running. When you start running again, that is what becoming you is all about. It's based on a methodology that I teach at the NYU Stern School of Business. And frankly, this is a special, special, special podcast because it is the best day of my life, because my lifelong dream has been achieved in that I am doing the Becoming youg podcast with my daughter, Sophia. My amazing, beautiful, fascinating, interesting, talented, extremely difficult. Oh, but also fabulous daughter, Sophia Welch. I'm so happy you're here. Hi.

Hi.

All right. I know you didn't want to do this or you were nervous to do it.

I am nervous.

Okay. But I'm really glad that you're here. You are the becoming you story. You had that incredible experience through your twenties of excavating your values, of discovering your aptitudes, what you were uniquely good at, and for figuring out what really interested you. I don't want to use the word journey because it was a struggle. Full on. I mean, it was a struggle. Here I am. It's sort of ironic. Like, I'm teaching Becoming you. You'd think my kids would have the big layup of what they were going to do with their lives, but each one of them has been on the Becoming youg journey. That has been a struggle. I'm not sure you can get to your purpose, which is really the goal of becoming you without walking on hot coals. And if you haven't walked on hot coals to find your purpose, I'm not sure you're at the right purpose. I would be so bold as to say that it is a process, and you are the poster child for it. And you also happen to be my fabulous daughter. And I'm so glad you came on the show and you are going to talk to us about your journey. But why don't you tell everybody where the story ends? Let's talk about where you are now, because I think you are in your area of transcendence. I mean, for a person of 34, that's stunning. I think we know. We know your aptitudes. It was a trial and error to discover them, and that was a journey for me as your mom. Where does the story end? And then we'll go back to the beginning of the story and piece it together also. Hi. And I really love your face.

Hi.

Hi.

The story ends with me being a casting professional. I work in casting. I cast movies and tv.

So what have you cast that everybody's heard of? What have you cast, period?

The show that I worked on that most people know is American Horror Story. I worked on a show called Hightown, which was on stars. The most proud to be somewhat associated with is a show called Mr. Robot, which was on USA when I was at Fox. I worked on movies like Bohemian Rhapsody. The Mountain Between Us was another movie we did there. I just finished on season two of the Rehearsal, which is a show on hbo. But most people know American Horror Story, that's the calling card, is American Horror Story.

Yeah. The story ends with you being a casting professional. All right. All right. Let's talk about where the story begins with you. As the second of my four children living with me and Jack, the two most opinionated, forceful tornadoes of parents any child could ever get, we had lots of opinions, and our opinions happened to be about what people should do with their lives. We were never short on advice. And in fact, we had very limited patience with. With individuals, including our children, who didn't know what the f. To do with their lives. And so let's just go there. Let's just go to your childhood and sort of talk about discovering yourself, what that felt like inside and what that looked like for you. I can take it, by the way. I can take it. Okay.

I had no idea what I was good at. I think I felt like maybe I wasn't good at anything. I think it was hard having the.

Older brother who was good at everything. Correct.

Well, I mean, you know, I mean.

We now know he's not good at everything, but at the time, he kind of was the golden child.

The older brother. Yeah, he was. And I think the. The thing. The one thing that I sort of did feel like I was maybe good at was writing. But, you know, when you have an editor and a sort of mentor as you, it kind of feels like you're maybe you're not good at writing. And so I think I just didn't know where I fit in. And I constantly was trying different things to sort of everything from what I wore to friend groups to, you know, after school classes. I think I just was trying everything to sort of get an identity.

I have a crazy, crazy memory of when you went away to boarding school and. And we found out that there was a girl in your dorm whose sister had just been sent away to one of those re education camps. This was before everybody knew how drastic and horrible they were. And the mother said, oh, yes, we've sent her away to Idaho to figure out her identity. And again, we were clueless. This was years and years ago. And I remember you in ninth grade looking at me and saying how wonderful it would be to go away and find out your identity. And I was like, wait, she doesn't know her identity? First of all, when I was a girl growing up, nobody spoke about identity. You just lived. Okay. It was very simple time. And so the fact that you were even seeking your identity was stunning to me.

Yeah. I think she used the words to reset.

Yeah.

And it was. That felt exciting to me because I was like, what if I could just clear the decks and figure out what I'm about, who I am?

You didn't have any idea?

No, I really didn't.

Yeah.

I knew maybe a couple things about myself, but I didn't feel confident in those things. I didn't have that much confidence.

And I think high school was kind of a struggle because you weren't really naturally academic. I mean, you hated testing.

Yeah.

And math and science were not your friends.

Yeah.

And you were good at writing, but writing only gets you so far. You loved poetry. And in modern American high schools in those days, like, just being good and loving poetry was not quite enough.

Yeah.

So you bumped along.

I got the newspaper. And that was helpful.

That's right.

That made me feel like, okay, in college, I should do something around writing or writing communications, because that's what's working here.

Right. And so, you know, back at the old ranch where Jack and I were trying to raise the children, we were clutching our chests a lot, saying, what will become of her? What will become of her? Because we sort of. We were, sweetheart. Because what? Your job as a parent is to launch your kids. And, I mean, if I could go back and do it all over again, I'd be a lot more laid back. Okay, fine. I just. You don't get a mulligan. It's like, I was uptight, and I wanted to make sure you got jobs. This was sort of how parents think. And we really did say, like, well, who is she? What is she going to be good at? And then it came time to go to college. And because your values and aptitudes and interests were not clearly defined, we didn't know what to do with you with college. But I will say this. You did have interests, and we didn't want to face into them. What were those interests?

Movies. Movies. And TV and actors, and you were.

Obsessed with movies and tv. I mean, we would find you, like, we would have. We put like a cap on how much you could watch tv and you would sneak in every way out to watch tv. We thought. I'm ashamed to say we thought it was a gigantic problem. We thought privately you were addicted to tv. And you were.

Yeah.

You were like. We'd be sitting at the dining room table and we'd be trying to get the kids to talk about politics and business. And you would be like, saying, they have the wrong lead in such and such a show. And we would like, say, oh, my God, I like to each other later, like, she wants to talk about tv.

What interested you about TV stories and I think just the sort of production of it.

Yeah.

Right. Like, I think thing that I loved the most was back when there were DVDs, there were the special features and it was like behind the scenes footage. And it felt to me like a team putting something together. You know, there's a whole group of people who really care about storytelling. Yeah. And who really care about making stories that other people connect to. Right. Like you think a feeling or an impulse is specific to you, but then you see a movie or you watch TV and realize it's. You know, you see it in that you were obsessed.

You tried to keep your obsession from us because we were not patting you on the head for it.

Well, you didn't allow us to watch tv.

Right. I didn't allow you. We didn't allow you to watch tv.

She's a square.

We just. I didn't want it to pollute your mind. Little did I know. And you were called to it, just emotionally and intellectually, like a magnet, you were called to it. It wasn't my construct of what my daughter was gonna be.

It wasn't Right. I don't know how many people we knew that were like out in Hollywood.

Right. Right. We were living in Boston at the time. And it was like when we thought about careers for our kids, Hollywood was not on the list. And then you knowing we were disapproving, you didn't have the language or the self confidence to advocate for yourself, saying, hey, I love this stuff. This is what's interesting to me. And we forced you into so many other activities and we tried to force you away from this thing that was calling you in ways subtle and not. And so then you end up in college. You end up at the University of Miami through a series of different events. And it was not easy for you. You majored in poetry, but everything else was quite hard for you.

Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe looking back, I probably should have, like, been taking more film classes and that kind of thing. But I. I did love poetry and I loved creative writing, and so that seemed like the right choice at that time.

Yeah. But you had science and math requirements. Those were beautiful. You ended up taking math with the football team, right?

Yes, that's correct.

And they thought that you had all the answers, and you didn't. And then you saw. You're like, I'm just like you. I don't get any of it.

And math 099. Not even 100.

Yeah.

099. Amazing.

It was a great story. And then you tried to get rid of your science requirement with a class called weather. I remember that. That didn't go too well. You had to take it again in the summer. I'm just sorry to bring that back up. Okay. So I love to say all the time, like, my daughter failed weather. So I. I would say, I love you for it. I love you. But you know what? It was a big flashing sign that you were good at something else. And I, like most parents, I'm going to beat myself up for it. But Jack and I were like most parents, which were like. We were like, wait, what is she gonna do? She failed weather. I mean, I remember Jack literally saying, how does a person fail weather? And we were just despairing. But meanwhile, you had a strong interest. You had aptitudes. We just didn't see them. And then I will tell this story that you don't like me telling, and I will not mimic you. And you can say it yourself. Lord reaction. Let's reenact it. I went to go visit you. You were a senior at, um. You were living off campus, because everybody does.

I was watching a show.

And you.

You wanted to, like, go outside and do something, which is not something I want to do.

And I wanted to go shopping with you, or I wanted to go do something with you. And you kept on saying to me, no, no, no, I have to finish watching this show. I think it was Mad Men, and I think you had seen the episode before, but you had to see it again. And you had your TV set up on a pile of books, and you were kneeling in front of it like a shrine.

I probably was watching it on my.

Laptop, and I was standing behind the counter in your kitchen, and I was watching you watch tv, and I saw your lips moving because you had seen it enough times that you had the script memorized. Okay. And I had finally I finally, finally had the eureka I should have had eight years before. And I went into the bedroom, I called Jack on my cell phone, and I said, jack, what if TV is not the problem? What if TV is the solution? And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, maybe she should just go out to Hollywood and be with all the people like her who love tv. And he said, that's genius. Like, the scales fell from our eyes at the exact same time. I mean, can you imagine? This was me. What a crappy mother I was. I just didn't see this in you. What? I hate myself, but I would just say I was ecstatic. Ecstatic. And I said to him, okay, okay, I'm gonna suggest Hollywood to her. I'm suggested. I think we've cracked the code. And I went in, and I was about to say it to you, and you shushed me off because you were still watching the episode. And finally the episode ended. I was about to burst into flames. I was so excited. And I said to you, sophia, I have an idea. What if after you graduate, you go out to Hollywood? And you said.

I said, would you guys let me.

That's right. Yeah.

And I want everyone to know that's the accurate read of that line.

The way she actually said it, listeners.

No, no, no.

The way she actually. The way she actually said it, listeners, was, oh, mom, would you let me.

Okay, I want you guys to know. Okay, I want the listeners to know that that is the. Speaking of.

We have interference.

Speaking of Hollywood. That is the Hollywood read of that line. Okay, okay. The real life reality read of that line is I was like. I mean, would you guys let me. Yeah, but.

Okay, the point is, I am telling the truth and have an accurate memory, but I would say, oh, mama, would you let me. Yeah, like, okay, no. Oh, mom, would you let me. But the thing that killed me and the reason why I agonize over that moment, agonize over it, was that you had doubt that Jack and I would let you be who you were. And that was our bad. That was our bad. And I felt. I mean, I almost cried at the time.

It hadn't even crossed my mind, honestly. And I said, I don't know. Would you guys let me. Just the idea of me going to California. I think casting was sort of the thing that fascinated me the most about Hollywood. But I didn't know, you know. Okay, well, if I'm into that, how do I get into casting? And, you know, I didn't know what I was doing as. As much as you all didn't know as well. And I think probably I was more comfortable with the idea of, like, going into a career where you could sort of say, I know about that and here's what you would do next, and sort of walk me through it, because I was such a baby, and so Hollywood kind of felt like an area that. That none of us knew about. To me, it just sort of felt like you were like, well, what about Hollywood? I think maybe you were like, jack and I were thinking, what about Hollywood? And I was like, would you let me?

I did not say, mama, will you let me? Yes, you did lie.

So do you remember the day you graduated? I did. What do you remember?

Yes, I remember that everyone else went to go to senior parties and we went to LA for me to start work. So thanks for that.

Well, we had to get your own party started.

So dumb.

Yeah, no, we went. We went on to la, moved into the apartment. Wolf had fleas. You were very unhappy with me for getting a dog before I graduated.

Yeah.

And then I started work with Alison Kaz. I started working on casting reality TV shows like the Monday immediately.

Yeah, Sophia had, like, a Chihuahua from hell.

No, she was an angel.

The late, great. The late, great Virginia Wolf was her name. Virginia Wolf. She was a dog would take your lungs out through your nose. She was not a great animal. But anyway, I almost died saving that dog's life in LA traffic, if you'll recall, because she broke off her leash and Sophia was paralyzed with terror as the cars in LA went whipping by us at a thousand miles an hour, who chased after Wolf, stopped traffic with their bare hands, and saved Wolf's lives.

You did.

Okay, fine. Thank you.

All right, so she was an icon, okay?

We had Wolf with us and we flew out to Hollywood. And you got your first job pretty quickly casting reality tv. And you did, because it ended up that you were actually kind of a savant. And I'm not gonna actually. You're not gonna say these things yourself, but I will say that a few years later, I was with a famous and great casting professional in la, Angela Demo. She is an established casting director. And I, right in front of your face, said to her, is Sophia good at this? Because my suspicion was that you were very good, given the way your career was going. And she said, oh, God, yes.

Do you all. I would love to know from listeners, do you have parents that meet your bosses and say, are they any good at their job? I mean, what a thing.

I don't recall saying, is she any good at her Job. I was out in Hollywood checking up on you. Your career was really taking off and I was going into that aptitudes bubble of the becoming you process. We knew your values, okay. And we definitely knew your interests. And for me, the missing piece to make sure that we were steering you right and doing our job. As I'm look at your face. You're so pretty, honey, I do love you so very much. Anyway, I would say that for me, the missing piece was, are we right? Is she uniquely good at this? Our suspicion was strongly yes. Right. But I had to go straight to the source. And it's true. I did ask your boss, is she good at this? And Angela confirmed for me, yeah, she is uniquely good at this. And I felt really confident after that, saying, even in the rough times, we stand behind you 100%. And we knew you were in your area of transcendence. And you loved it.

Yes, I loved a lot of things about it, yes.

Now we're getting to the nub of the story.

Here's the meat of the story. I loved a lot of things about it and there were things about it, however, that really frustrated me and that really bumped up against what were they? My values.

What were they?

The main thing is that most jobs in casting are freelance. Right. They're project to project. And so I am a person that likes to a lesser degree now. And we'll get into that. I like predictability, I like stability. I like knowing what I'm going to be doing every day. And I like being employed. I love work and I do not like long periods of unemployment. And so in casting, because you're, you're job to job work is not consistent. And that really freaked me out and didn't feel good to me.

What was happening was two of your deeply held values were not being met. One was we have a value called scope, which is how big, exciting, unpredictable and chaotic you want your life to be. And you are a very low scope person. You want predictability, you hunger for it. From when you were a little girl, you wanted to know at one o' clock what we were doing at two o'. Clock. I mean, you are a low scope person. That's probably my fault. I, I, because Jack and I were like, we were scope. There's not even a measurement for how high scope Jack and I wanted our lives to be. And it actually made all four of the children extremely low scope. Eve's the only one who has a little bit of a desire for interest in her life for, oops, sorry for lack of chaos. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Interest and scope are not the.

Okay, you're right. They're not the same thing. Okay. But you're a very, very low scope person, and casting was forcing you out of that value because it had so much unpredictability in it. And the second is you have very high achievement as a value. Achievement is the value that measures scene success. That people in the outside world look at you and they say, that person's a success. And the intermittent nature of casting meant that there were periods where you were just flat out unemployed. But that's the nature of the beast in those valleys. Your achievement value was being deeply, deeply challenged. You hated it when people said to you, what are you doing? You would say, I'm unemployed. You hated it.

Well, I think also the job of casting a lot of the time is you're behind the camera. You're inherently unseen. And I think the more confidence I gained and the more that I worked and the more that I felt like, I'm really proud of this work, and I want to be seen and recognized for it.

Casting is so underappreciated. A show is made or broken on casting. I agree. And there's no casting. Oscar, for instance. Correct.

This will be the first year.

Okay, so now they're finally. They're giving casting people Oscar. You wanted to be recognized for what casting did, and you hated that. So your achievement and scope values were like code red.

Yep.

Your aptitude was like green as green gets. And your interests were green as green gets. And then disaster struck, which was Jack, your beloved Jack, your adore Jack, your bestie there, got very sick. And then we got the diagnosis that we were out of options. And I called you to say, we're out of options. We don't have very much time. And you said, I'm coming home.

Yeah.

You made the decision, for which I'll be forever grateful, to come live with me and be by my side, shoulder to shoulder as we abided him while he died. And thank you for that. You moved in with me, and you were with me every minute. And when I could take no more, you would come in and be with him. And when he wanted to watch tv, you would hold his hand and sit next to him. And you were fantastic. You had left Hollywood to do that, and you were going to go back. The plan was to go back, but eventually all of the children moved in. And then the pandemic struck. So the plan was sort of to go back. I mean, you were having doubts, and those two values disruptions were really bugging you.

I think that the. Always the other sort of the path, the road not taken was something in communication, something in writing, something where I was writing. That's what I studied in school. And that was sort of in my mind, my other aptitude.

Yeah.

And I thought, there are these core things about casting that are not going to change, and I don't think I'm going to change. So let me try this other path and see. And I think I probably would have always wondered or regretted if I. If I hadn't, because, you know that I. We flew out to LA the day after I graduated from college with Wolf.

We did.

I had only ever done casting.

Right. And it was sort of ten years in at that point, wasn't it? Or eight years. Eight years in.

Yep. And I felt sort of there was one foot out the door, and of course, our family's on the east coast. And I just kind of felt like with Jack getting sick, it was time. Basically, like the week that he passed. The pandemic happened.

Right. So then fate reared its ugly head in that Jack died on March 1, 2020. The pandemic struck sort of March 15. At that time, you were helping me out with writing because we were running Quadio, the music tech company started by my son and my Jack's grandson, which I've spoken about on the podcast before. And I was desperate for somebody who knew how to write and had editorial skills. So I dragged you into doing social media for Quadio. And it's fair to say you hated every minute of it.

Yeah, it's totally fair.

Why did you hate it?

Because I don't like writing.

That's the problem. So you had an aptitude of writing. This cannot be denied. It wasn't your greatest aptitude casting, I think was, but can we get.

Are we getting on the record that you are saying I can write?

Yes. I've always thought you could write. You just like all other writers, you need an editor. Okay. And that was a big fat problem, is you never wanted me editing you. Okay. But guess what?

You want their mother editing them. I mean, the most unenjoyable thing I can think of in the world is having your mother as your editor.

Okay, fine. So that was the position we were in at Quadio. You were doing all the writing and I was editing you. So you hated that, number one. But also you just hated writing. And I started pointing out to you that you didn't actually love the actual act of writing. And, I mean, I am a writer. That's what I do. By trade. And I mean, I feel when I am writing, despite the fact that I complain about it bitterly, like all writers is, I feel like I'm skating. That's the. The analogy. In my mind. I am like an Olympic skater out there doing all sorts of jumps and flips, and it feels so good and I'm hungry. When I don't write, I feel incomplete. You had none of those feelings, right?

I mean, I will say, though, it's hard with writing because it's like a toxic relationship. If you feel happy or if you feel like writing is easy, you probably aren't a writer. Yeah, right.

I felt happy writing becoming you, which is coming out May 5th. You can pre order it now. But I felt happy. I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself. I felt happy writing becoming you. But I had to go back and rewrite those. I mean, like, editably heavily. And I'm. I miserable. Is I all right? You. But you never loved.

No, you never.

You never. I mean, I have not only been a writer, I have been a manager of writers. And you never presented as a writer. Okay. You just didn't like the work of it. But after Quadio shut down, you decided to stay in communications. Why? Because you were answering the clarion call of those two values of predictability, low scope and high achievement. And what did you do?

I went into a job at a big corporation where I knew that I would have a job every day. I went and worked at Warner Brothers Discovery. I did communications for basically recruitment marketing. So it was predictable to the extent that a job in. In corporate America can kind of be predictable. And they were really good to me. They promoted me quickly. Everyone liked my writing. Everyone told me that I was talented. And I felt very, actually very seen.

Your achievement bell was ringing loudly from happiness.

Yes. Yes.

What was the problem?

I did not find the content of the work to be meaningful to me.

So you didn't like the actual activity of writing, really?

I was not moved by writing for recruitment marketing.

All right.

Basically.

All right, so what happened?

So Angela called me.

Your old casting boss.

Yes. Yes. And she was like, I'm going to need an associate again soon because her current associate was moving on to another job. And I was like, nothing would make me happier than to be casting.

It was like a spontaneous thing. Like, she called you, your old boss called you and said, come back to casting. And like, just.

She was in town. Actually, she was in New York. And when you were having dinner.

Yeah.

And she was like, I mean, associate soon, if you want to come Back because I was expressing to her, I think that, you know, I wasn't fulfilled. And I was like, if you want me to be your associate again, like, I will drop everything and come be your associate again. And she was like, be careful what you say because I will come for you if that's true. And I was like, I'm. I will completely drop everything. And she was like, will he? And then she called me a couple weeks later and was like, I'm taking you up on that. Do you want to do this show with me? And I quit that day.

Yep. So walk us through why you did it. Like, what changed that made you feel like you wanted to go back to casting?

Yeah, I had kind of unrealistic expectations when I was in casting. I think I just didn't understand that no job is perfect. I thought that, like, there was some sort of dream perfect job for me out there. And I mean, now I know casting is. Is that because it meets the most values and expectations for me, but I think that I just was looking for something that doesn't exist, which is something where you feel totally comfortable and totally at ease and like all of your needs are met and all of your values are aligned. And I think I just kind of had to learn that that job doesn't exist. I think my values just kind of adjusted or I just sort of thought, okay, casting doesn't meet my value for predictability or small scope. I'm not going to know what I'm doing tomorrow. There might be periods of time where I'm unemployed, but I would take that.

Yeah.

Over having work that I'm not particularly interested in casting. I care about casting makes me feel. It just like lights something up in me.

Yeah, you're alive when you're casting. You are so alive. Like, you will send us as a in the family text like clips of what you're looking at and you will have comments about people. You're utterly alive when you're casting. And for me, you are in your area of transcendence. When you are feeling the most alive. When I'm teaching, I feel very, very alive. When I'm doing this podcast, I feel very, very alive. When I'm doing it with you, I feel like my head burst into flames. I'm so alive. But I would say that you learn this incredible life lesson and a lesson that's really inherent in becoming you, which is that you have to at some point make trade offs. But you have your aptitude sphere, like totally met. Right. You are so good at casting, uniquely good at it. And your interest is entertainment. Your interest is making TV and being a part of a production team. You're interested in movies. You really care about who's playing what role. I mean, you do. It's amazing. And then you're not. All of your values are being exactly met. But I think it's very interesting. You've matured and your values have kind of like, you don't desperately need that feeling of predictability anymore, and you don't. And you've sort of come to terms with what achievement looks like in the industry you're in, and you've made an accommodation for that. It's possible someday you will have a casting job that has more predictability. Those. Those exist.

Yeah. No, they.

And you'll have everything, but you're not quite there yet. I mean, it's quite a story. Well, thanks.

Yeah, I mean, I think so. I honestly, I just got older. I just sort of matured. And again, like, I'm so grateful that I tried that other path because I wouldn't know otherwise what it feels like when you're doing work that you really care about that. For me, yeah, that just outweighs the other things that I maybe want on any given day. And I can kind of learn to like a lot of people in casting, particularly now, just sort of when there's periods of unemployment or periods where you don't. When you're not on a show or a movie, you just sort of settle into that and say, look, I don't like it, but this is the way it is for just about everyone in this industry. So I'm gonna kind of learn to.

Live with it and find other work. I mean, you're teaching.

Yeah.

Teaching acting now.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Find other work as well.

So I'm sort of scared to ask this question. Okay, I'll ask it. Was I helpful along the way or really hurtful? Like, what was it? Be honest. No, I think I wanted to be helpful.

Well, it's hard because it's not like I was calling you from LA when I was working in casting and saying things like, I'm so happy. I think I really. When I would lean on you as a mom, I would call you and complain. Yes, you said to me. I actually am so happy to tell this story because. Okay, go ahead. What you have said to me, you should just be a critic because you hate everything. Oh, yeah, that's on the record now.

Well, you do sort of hate everything. Right?

But I. Yeah, you do hate. What you were saying was like, you're good at discerning and calling things out and saying what's not good about something.

You just. You were trying to make you good at casting.

Right. Casting is for haters.

Say more about that. You gotta love actors to be a casting director.

Yeah. You have to love actors, but you have to just be really critical, pretty straightforward about what works and what doesn't. Yeah, there's not a lot of time.

Yeah. I mean, casting's like editing. I mean, you would think editors hate everything. Editors. Editing is for haters. That's for sure. I mean, I've done that my whole life. So I'm hearing that I was maybe a little bit helpful. I think that, you know, like, as you were on this journey and probably a little bit not helpful as you were on this journey, I was developing, becoming you. I mean, I wish I had had the language to tell you about values and aptitudes and interests, but, I mean, you were part of me developing, becoming you. I mean, I think when people say to me, when did I start developing it? The answer is in 1988, in business school when I found out that I didn't know my own aptitudes or my own values or my own interests, had no idea. And I had to figure it out. And the journey really began then and went all the way through writing the books with Jack and then writing for Oprah and really sort of starting to write about how people made career decisions. And I was formulating it along with you. Formulating your life. Life. And we kind of both landed. You landed in your area. Transcendence. Just in the right moment when I could use you as an example of somebody landing in their area of transcendence. It kind of worked out that way.

Yeah.

Kind of wild, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe we should make a movie of our lives.

Who would stars? Me and you.

We always have.

Come on. Who would play me?

I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about this.

Okay, go ahead, just share them.

Well, I know that you love the idea of Julianne Moore as you.

Oh, well, I. I mean, she. She's too beautiful to play me.

But if are going like, looks. I just don't know. It's just not that it's so much easier to cast. I'm too close to you.

Who would play you?

Someone who's a hater.

Yeah.

Aubrey Plaza.

Aubrey Plaza, that's right. She'd be perfect. Okay. She's just a professional hater. All right. So are you happy?

Yeah, I'm really happy. I mean, I'm anxious. That's Okay. I don't know. Maybe anxiety is sort of like my baseline, and so it doesn't really bother me that much anymore.

I know you're better with it than you used to be. Yeah. I always say that becoming you does not promise happiness. I'm not part of the happiness industrial complex. I actually kind of hate the happiness industrial complex. The first line of the book becoming you is, thank your lucky stars this is not another book about happiness. But I do think happiness is the outcome of a meaningful, productive, connected life.

Yeah.

And that's what the area of transcendence is about, is a meaningful, connected, productive life. And so I'm glad you're happy. It makes me happy that you're happy.

Yeah.

That's what a mom wants.

The idea of meaningful, I think probably is different for everyone.

For.

Yeah, for me, yeah. Meaningful meant the content of the work had to be something I cared about. If. If meaningful for you is spending a lot of time with your kids and so you want a job that is a 9 to 5 and you don't care as much about the content of the work, then that's different. For me, meaningful was work. Was the. Was caring about the work that I was doing.

Yeah. I mean, you've had hard jobs, Sophia. I mean, casting is hard. Writing is hard. Like, why was casting's hard? Okay.

Well, I think because I loved the content of the work. I loved being a part of. I love being a part of something that I think is important and that I also, like, consume and love to talk about with people and am proud of the final product. Right. But I think also some of the hard things about it were things that I was willing to work on about myself. So why did it bother me so much that I wasn't getting enough credit or I wasn't feeling seen as I got older, as I, like, matured, basically, I can say, well, you know, I guess what matters to me is being seen by the people that matter to me. So my family and my friends and my boss and I don't need to be seen by everyone in Hollywood kind of thing.

Right. This is actually a value. This is a becoming you value called luminance, which is really about how many people know you. It's fame, in a way. And I think you. You let go of it. I mean, and I think actually your whole story is such an incredible example of becoming you at work. I mean, I think the. We probably could have done it in a lot shorter time had we had becoming you at our fingertips while you were going through your Struggles in Hollywood, trying to figure out what to do. And we would have been able to have a language around your values. But we got that language now. And I love your story. I love you for sharing it. I just love you anyway. You're nice. But I would just say that it's, you know, it hasn't been easy, even just for you and I, because we locked horns a lot of way. Because I, first of all, I have really different values. I, like, I'm a big scope person, and I'm, you know, I can deal with a lot of ambiguity and chaos. And there were times where I just really challenged you over and over again. There were times where you had paralysis. That's part of the life discovery journey, is that we freeze, we freak out, we. We struggle. We have two feelings that are exactly opposite at the same time. You had all of those. And the people around us are commenting to us about our journey as we're on our journey. I certainly commented on your journey all the way through.

Yeah.

That's hard to shut down that noise.

Well, I think also, like you as a mom, your way is. Is so often the right way, and you're right about so much that to say my values are different than yours feels, like, incorrect. Like, I might have incorrect values. Like, it took me a while to be like, it's okay that I don't like ambiguity and chaos. Right.

And I had to come to terms with it. Also. I had to come to terms because.

Those are things that you thrive on.

Perhaps.

Perhaps so. So I would say that is. That was like, the one. The biggest challenge of you as a mom is being like, oh, we can have different values. And I'm not. I'm not wrong in my values.

And it's not about you. It's just about values. I mean, one of the things I love the most about becoming you is just that it allows us to talk about values without it getting personal.

Yeah.

You know, we just have different values that just sort of takes a lot of the. You know, like, we are. We are. Case in point. It's like we're talking about us being in different places on the continuum of scope.

Yeah.

And it's not like you're better or worse. It's like, I mean, I think in many ways you taught me to be a values agnostic. I just have to take you as you are, and your interests are your interests, and I salute you for having passionate interests. It's really fantastic. I'm so glad you've gone on your journey. And Wolf was along for much of the ride. And she lived a long time. How long did Wolfie live? Well, we don't know. We don't know because we don't know how old you were. She was when you rescued her, but we think she was.

Who knows what she was doing out there.

I know. In the streets of Miami before you. Well, we've got lots of people who accompany us on our journeys, and we listen to a lot of them, but at the end of the day, we kind of have to listen to our own voice.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you did that.

It took me a little while, but yeah.

Yeah, I'm glad you did. I'm so happy you're here today, Sophia. Look, I am so happy that our listeners are here today. I love each and every one of you. I'm so grateful you're here with us and that you got to hear Sophia's story. It is her story.

I hope it was okay, everyone.

It was better than okay. For God's sake. Sake, Sophia. Look, if you're listening to this on a Spotify app, please do me a big favor and write a review or just give it a rating. It really, really matters, and I really would appreciate it. I love how many people are listening to this podcast. Thank you for telling your friends about it, which apparently is happening. And come back next week. We have got more stuff in store for you as we go along this journey. Figuring out how to answer the question, what should I do with my life? Which we have to answer over and over and over again. That is never done. That's why I say becoming use a forever kind of thing. So keep on coming back forever. This is Susie Welch, and thanks for being with me.